Come At Me, 2013!

“People need revelation, and then they need resolution.”
-Damian Lewis

I like resolutions, I just don’t always like New Year’s resolutions; anything with a culturally built in expectation of failure sort of annoys me.  But every year I make them – in more recent years I’ve kept them extremely well.  #humblebrag

A format I came across for resolutions that I really liked was by Carly at College Prep: she divided her coming year up by monthly goals and aspirations to work on one at a time.  Much nicer than listing all the things you want to work on, tackling them all at once, and collapsing in a heap in early February (likely stuffing yourself with chocolate cake, skipping that class you signed up for, and whipping yourself.  Literally or metaphorically, depending on your resolutions – no judgement here).  Since 2013 is going to be a bit touch and go, months aren’t quite feasible but quarters definitely are, so here’s what I’m thinking:

Q1: Work
As weird as it is to think about, I’ve got about two months left here at good old Nowhereford, Noneofyourbusinessshire University police.  I’ve learned a lot and am grateful for my what I’ve done here, but I am excited for new challenges and opportunities – one in particular that I’ll talk about soon!  My goal is to finish up my job well, leave it in a better state than I found it, and throw myself into new jobs with enthusiasm and and energy.

Q2: Document
We’re moving in Spring, which will require a lot of organization, creativity, and good humor.  I’ve jumped continents before and believe you me, it’s fun but it’s work!  But I still want to make an effort to be better about taking pictures, writing things down, blogging, and keeping in touch with people in the midst of the chaos.  Apart from anything else, it should provide you minions with a lot of amusement watching us scramble.  We live to serve.

Q3: Writing
Once we’ve settled, I’m jumping into writing again.  We’re still unsure of what my work status will be in Britain, I may only be allowed to be the National Gallery’s latest unpaid (but eager!) volunteer, but so be it.  I’m going to relearn how to pitch myself as a writer to US publications, print and online, work hard on this mysterious opportunity I’ve alluded to, and bloody find other chances.  They are out there and for the first time in a long time, I can stalk them.  Aggressively.

Q4: Travel
Travel makes me happy; seeing new places or even revisiting old ones, hearing new words, trying new foods, just getting up and going somewhere is like a cool breeze for the soul.  My soul could use some airing out.  Yes, yes, I know.  “Selfish, C., you were just in London this past summer!”  Fine.  I’m greedy.  Gluttonous, even.  Sue me.

Looking ahead to 2013, I have so much in store I’m almost dizzy thinking about it – and if I’m honest, a bit nervous to see if everything will work out, as my optimism has been rather strained over the last year.  But I believe in tenacity and how far it can get you if you grit your teeth and keep pushing for what you want, as long as you keep grinning.  I can’t wait to see where we get!

via

Year in Review

Years are such big things, aren’t they?  I know for me at least, they seem to go by quicker and quicker, but when I really think back over what happened this past year, I’m a bit boggled!

We had some struggles this year.  I was personally spared a great deal, but many of those I love had some rough times.  Friends got divorced, health problems continued to dog others, and my brother-in-law lost his parents.

There were other, better times.  I got a tiny little addiction (and found out many of you were already strung out), and enjoyed it entering the cultural zeitgeist.

Friends got married, a few had babies, and there were parties.

J. was gone for half the year (which is weird, because it doesn’t seem like we were ever apart), and we missed each other.  And apparently baffled not a few people who prophesied all sorts of cheery things for us (including infidelity) – so thanks for all you guys who didn’t take that train of thought and instead provided support, distraction, and encouragement.

Margot lived with me for a while before she got married and J. came back.  Hilarity ensued.

I committed to getting healthy this year and had a lot of fun doing so.  Of course, a year of working out at least one hour a day did wonders for me – but it took a bout of food poisoning to drop that last ten pounds.

The universe dropped a happiness bomb on us!

I was Best Man in a wedding.

Half the country caught fire over the summer.  Other, less destructive things happened too.

J. graduated, and we spent a week in London to celebrate and reported on our adventures.  I can’t want to go back.

I turned 26 and J. 27.

The election, a production the better part of a decade in the making happened.  I was annoyed with the more wailing and gnashing of teeth reactions, but then the Mayans predicted the end of the world so maybe November signalled the end…

…Oh.  Wait.

J. and I ran off to Virginia for Thanksgiving and gave you an insight into the Small Dog clan, and we stayed put for Christmas.

And all throughout, work was…typical.

2012 wasn’t a stellar writing year, but I think was one of the best pieces I’ve done in the last twelve months.

And that was the past year here at Small Dog HQ.  The world at large did not end (to some people’s annoyance), but Gangam Style, the terrible Liz and Dick TV movie, and Rush Limbaugh made a few of us wonder if it might.  Things are politically tricksy in this country, and even more so elsewhere, but there were a great many small ways the human race showed that it’s going to get through it – small boys held signs reminding the world that the act of a few radicals did not and would not be allowed to speak for him, and neighbors shared power after cities went dark from storms.  Sure things, got a bit snarky and grim from time to time, but there were always bright sparks of humor, real good will, and happiness – and if that doesn’t sum up what we’re trying to do here, nothing does.

And 2013 is already looking so breathlessly hopeful I can barely stand it.

Happy New Year, kittens!  I hope it brings good things for all of you!

Friday Links XLVII (Last of 2012)

“The friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you.”
~ Elbert Hubbard

It’s after midnight and therefore technically the wrong day, but here are your links anyway.  I had to stay a bit after at work to finish up some chores (bless the long weekend) and then had a last minute chance to hang out with an old friend before she hopped back to teach English in South Korea again for goodness knows how long.  But the minions will not be denied!

“Beefsteak is her mainstay!” is now a Small Dog Inc. approved catchphrase.  Ten points to the first duckling to employ it in everyday conversation and report back.

And in other interesting women from history news, there’s this lady.

These are all sorts of adorable.

Sorry for partyrocking?  (Honestly, people, stay off the UNESCO world heritage sites!)

Apparently, grenade launchers were turned in.  I have friends who range in opinions from “You can pry my gun from my cold, freedom loving fingers, you hippie!” to “Make love not war, man,” so I’d like to hear the minion coterie’s thoughts.

I have heard of this, but I still find it a funny problem.  The title rather sums it up for me.

Still in the mood to shop, but trying to balance it with New Year resolutions to be a better person?  Behold the solution to your dilemma.

So, we’ve discussed how I’m not a purist and love a good adaptation – here is a rather clever one in my opinion.  No joke, I took the whole series in in two sittings last weekend.  Start at number one and enjoy.

Happy Christmas!

Time for another true I’m-not-really-an-adult-at-all-inside confession.  One of my favorite descriptions of Christmas comes from The Muppet Christmas Carol: “It is the summer of the soul in December.”

And so it is!  The collective decision that right around the darkest, longest night of the year, when most of the vegetation is dead, most places are colder, and supplies are running low, is the perfect time to celebrate belief/hope, kith and kin, and all the good things is one of the great cultural triumphs of mankind.  Or so I think.

Hope you and yours have a whole lot of comfort and joy this holiday season, whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, New Year, or just a couple of days off here and there!

Friday Links XLVI (Yep, stil allive)

Christmas is for children. But it is for grownups too. Even if it is a headache, a chore, and nightmare, it is a period of necessary defrosting of chill and hide-bound hearts.
- Lenora Mattingly Weber, Extension

You guys do know I continue on the back, right? No? Oops…

The world didn’t end, the zombies didn’t rise, and nothing came through any portal.  Alas!  We’re just getting through the last couple of hours before the Christmas holiday officially kicks of.  I have girl dates with Venice and Angel (both visiting from out of town) this weekend and then we spend Monday and Tuesday being cheerfully bossed about by nieces and nephews – as the sole purpose for our existence is to amuse them, and we know it!  What are your Christmas plans, my pumpkins?

Who did the paperwork on this?!

What do you think of this list, anything important missed?  (I’m trying to streamline my life here, with a move coming up.)

Perspective.

This Pintrest board is fantastic!

This tumblr is equal in fantastic-ness.

Holiday party dresses are clearly on my mind.  This one is honestly more my style, but this one is calling to my inner flapper with it’s sparkly siren song…

On the flight to my parents house I read a fabulous article in the airline’s magazine (an underrated publication, I feel) that I had to share!  …Classic me, I wrote down the title and promptly lost it.  But thanks to the magic of the internets, voila.  Tell me what you think I really enjoyed the piece (I also want to befriend her so I can go to her summer luncheons).

Last minute gift that also does good?  Have no fear.

Anyone else think the price tag is, shall we say, a bit much?

So, moment of shameless bragging.  The other week someone said that J. looked like a mix between Jonathan Rhys Meyer and Benedict Cumberbatch.  You can imagine the smugness – coupled with feeling suddenly okay with having children someday as those are some genes that clearly need to be passed on.  I also have a friend (Scarlett) who is an absolute dead wringer for Alessandra Ambrosia, go figure.  These  are also pretty impressive.

This is very interesting to me, and I’m curious as to your thoughts, minions.  There seems to be, in some spheres, a bit of a backlash against the omnipresence of media and instant availability, particularly with social media.  I know a lot of people who are dialing back their online profiles and involvement, many report feeling happier and having a great deal more time on their hands.  Do you guys think this is a broader trend? Good or bad?  Let me know what you think!

The weekly sheep, courtesy of the other blog.

This is My Jam

“And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that [Christmas] has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

My deep love for traditional carols is well documented, and highly unlikely to change, but some Hipster tunes have recently been brought to my attention that I am not at all loathe to add to my Vince Guaraldi.

Hey, It’s Christmas produces an album a year with lesser known artists delivering Christmas songs, some traditional and some totally new.  You can stream them for free or you can pay what you think they’re worth to download.  Here are Volume I, Volume II, and Volume III.

What do you guys think?

Thanksgiving

“I celebrated Thanksgiving in an old-fashioned way. I invited everyone in my neighborhood to my house, we had an enormous feast, and then I killed them and took their land.”
― Jon Stewart

Going home for the holidays is always so restful for me – sure a tiff or two might crop up, but they’re rare, usually solved with a tussle or a game, and the food more than makes up for it. Besides my house is the only place where the following conversation could take place and everyone would think it was normal:

Me, to Buddy: “You needed a fez for that.”
Buddy: “I know, but I couldn’t find one.”
Dad: “What do you mean?  I have a fez.”
Buddy (incensed): “How did I not know this!”
Dad (matter-of-factly): “Not my fault.  You have never asked me if I had a fez.”

A typical Autumn evening with the Small Dog clan.

This image of my brothers might provide some visual clarity to our collective mental state.

This year the turkey surprised us all by finishing a full two hours ahead of schedule (seriously, we’re baffled, we’ve only ever experienced the opposite) and we had to scramble and mobilize all the troops to get things finished and the table set for our feast.  But all was well!

It is not possible that you could sense this through the screen, kittens, but these are the two best pies in creation – both recipes family secrets – and I will fight anyone who says differently.

These pies were the source of much hilarity.  You see, that pie on the right is my mother’s rightly famous one, and she has always had very particular ideas about how it should be done.  Namely, there is normally a piece of dough fashioned in the shape of autumn leaves that it left on top and bakes nicely into the pumpkin filling (made, traditionally, from the remains of our Halloween jack-o’lanterns).  The last time we were there for Thanksgiving my mother, upon realizing that she had popped the pie in the oven without it’s customary finishing leaf, whipped up a special batch of dough just to put the darn thing on.  This year I pointed out that the leaf was missing and she tossed her head with a magnificent, “Whatever!”

The road to our land, loving referred to as The Estate.

My father’s land is also the source of some hilarity for me, but perhaps I’ll save that for another post.  It’s his pride and joy.  When he first bought it, the handful of acres that weren’t forest were covered in brush taller than I was at the time.  Now he has several cleared acres that support his berry bushes, a small orchard in the making, and plans for a pond.  He was born in the wrong century, he was meant to be a gentleman farmer.

Fun fact about our land, American Founding Father Patrick Henry had his first job as a lawyer in our town, the road he walked to get to work runs across our property, and won his first election to represent the county locally.  Also, the parents of J. Sargeant Reynolds (of the aluminum fame) are supposedly buried somewhere on our property as well, though we don’t have a lot of proof for that one.  There are an amazing amount of old houses (with fantastic estate names) and many of the families have been in the area for generations (and a handful for centuries) so many properties have private family cemeteries on them – but alas for the Reynolds, they’ll only be discovered if we ever break ground for a house or something.

Dad’s latest project is bee-keeping. And those little guys are prolific, we have several pounds of wild honey stored in the basement.

That J. and I have puppy lust is already well documented, but he compounded the problem by spending the entire vacation playing with Mika, supplanting all of us in her affections by tummy rubs, sneaking her treats, and taking her for runs.  The man needs a dog.  We also went out to play with Maxi and Niney, the dogs on our property to keep it deer and bear free.  Oh, and a bear apparently lives in a copse behind a house just up the street from my parents and likes to set all the neighborhood pets off at night by wandering around.

One of the dogs frolicking.

A week of doing next to nothing means that in the eternal balance of things, I’m now absolutely swamped at work.  The continued lack of a replacement for Officer Lampost really is affecting my ability to work as effectively as I would like (which is a much less whiny way of saying that I had a twenty minute lunch break on Monday and Tuesday, and still had to stay after a full two hours on the latter to just get through my list of things to do).  Vacation is over, friends, and no mistake!  Luckily, I’m working on a few projects I’m really interested in and my work seems to be impressing several of my bosses, so onward towards Christmas, minions.

So Close!

“I need to ask you to come over and clean my house,” Chief exclaimed when he saw my outfit today.
“Sir?”
“You’re supposed to be a cleaner, right?  Or a housekeeper?”
Quoth I, cheerfully but not without a bit of spice, “I am the exact opposite of a housekeeper.”

J. managed to use that tree to “Popeye” my forearm a bit. We are neither of us photographers.

Campus Costumes

“I’ll bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween.”
~Author Unknown

People really get into the spirit of Halloween on our humble campus, and what’s really valued is creativity.  No “sexy Mrs. Potato Heads” here if you please, we want to see you come up with something clever!  And I fail almost every time to remember my camera.  Some bloggers live to Instagram, kittens, and I struggle with not dropping smartphones.  C’est la vie.

So far I’ve seen:

Ash Ketchem and Pikachu (of Pokemon fame), couples costume
The Doctor (as interpreted by David Tennant)
Zombies, as a group
A spider
Robin Hood
A wizard
Snow White
A bumblebee
Far too many girls in cat ears with whiskers drawn on their face
Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz
Minnie Mouse
At least three people with name tags reading “Maybe”
A Lego brick

Dressing up is something I still love and plan on enjoying until age and infirmity take me.  This year I’m Rosie the Riveter.  We’ll see if we get around to documenting it.  We can do it!

Guns, Booze, and Steel

“An inherent cultural passion for things that went boom, perhaps.”
- Louis McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

I’m at work today kittens, this is one of our busiest days of the year on account of the parades, local events, and stadium fireworks show.

If we judge by history, at least one police officer will be hit by a car this evening – due to the fact that people turn into jerks when told they can’t jump the line to get out of the parking lot ahead of the fifteen thousand other cars.  Seventeen people will try to bring their firearms into the stadium and throw a fit when they are turned away.  Five thousand mothers will try to bring outside food in and their children will throw fits when we tell them they cannot.  Four fistfights will breakout twixt fans of different sports team persuasions.  Twenty five people will be arrest for public intoxication.  Three small fire will be started from poorly monitored firecrackers.

And a partridge in a pear tree.

Actually, I love July 4th.  I like picnics with friends, getting out in the summer sun, the local fairs and parades that spring up everywhere, getting to a park early to claim a comfy spot of grass with blankets, and watching fireworks.  But I’d be lying if I said that July 4th didn’t bring out some unfortunate behavior that I wish didn’t get slathered with a veneer of patriotism.  Drunk and disorderly is still drunk and disorderly, and slurring, “You carn arressssst muh, ‘s a frey country!” is not a legal defense.

On a more practical note, be careful with the fireworks, kittens.  Half the country is already on fire.